


the ones who stood for something more, we won't forget your names

by eynn



Series: i can't go back and lose it all [20]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Aromantic CT-7567 | Rex, Asexual CC-2224 | Cody, Asexual CT-7567 | Rex, Asexual Obi-Wan Kenobi, Demisexual Anakin Skywalker, Fix-It, Found Family, Gen, Nobody Dies, Post-Order 66, anakin and obi-wan and leia have some much needed bonding time and introductions, and anakin comes to a startling realization that obi-wan has missed for about twenty years, aromantic anakin skywalker, he was also farming space weed in the temple, qui-gon is a force ghost, sith!jedi order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23732221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: Anakin bounces his daughter in his arms and smiles down at her. She’s chewing determinedly on a toy and looking around with wide, unfocused eyes. He’s taking her on a tour of the Temple. They’ve both been bored in their rooms.Padmé is negotiating with Chancellor Chuchi and the Senate about becoming Empress. Rex is hovering menacingly and worriedly behind her. They’d both forbidden him from coming – something about ‘aggressive negotiations not being needed right now’ and also citing that someone had to stay with Padmakin.Anakin likes taking care of his daughter. He doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. If Padmé does become Empress, and Rex is her consort in public, then he can stay at home and raise little Padma. Maybe even more little Padmas.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker
Series: i can't go back and lose it all [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658362
Comments: 61
Kudos: 798





	the ones who stood for something more, we won't forget your names

“And that down there is where all the training rooms are. If everyone was here we could go watch some training fights. Wouldn’t that be fun? Yeah, it would. You’d like the glowy lights.”

Anakin bounces his daughter in his arms and smiles down at her. She’s chewing determinedly on a toy and looking around with wide, unfocused eyes. He’s taking her on a tour of the Temple. They’ve both been bored in their rooms.

Padmé is negotiating with Chancellor Chuchi and the Senate about becoming Empress. Rex is hovering menacingly and worriedly behind her. They’d both forbidden him from coming – something about ‘aggressive negotiations not being needed right now’ and also citing that someone had to stay with Padmakin.

Anakin likes taking care of his daughter. He doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. If Padmé does become Empress, and Rex is her consort in public, then he can stay at home and raise little Padma. Maybe even more little Padmas.

He’s not really into making babies, but he does love taking care of them. Not for the first time, he regrets that he didn’t make more of a fuss when he was younger about becoming a crechemaster instead of a knight.

So what if some idiots outside the Order think that being the stay-at-home parent in their family makes him less of a man? He’s not especially attached to being a man, but he is very, very attached to his family.

He coos wordlessly at his child, safe in his arms in her little sling, and turns away from the hallway he’s paused outside. “How about we go look at the gardens? You’ll like those. They’re nice and warm and they smell so good. That’s where we get a lot of our food! Yeah, you like food, don’t you?”

It’s a good thing that most of the basic systems in the Temple’s gardens are automated, because they would be suffering since everyone who normally cares for them are gone. It’s not like they have time to water and prune and pick what’s in there at the moment.

Anakin steps into the first greenhouse and breathes in the humid scent of earth and life. Padma squeals happily and flails her little fists.

He’s not sure if she’s just picking up on his mood or if she really does like the greenhouse, but he moves through it anyway, narrating the different kinds of plants they pass. Some are for food, some are medicinal, some have unique Force properties, some just help other plants to grow.

Padma doesn’t care; she stares at all of them equally and several times attempts to stuff an errant leaf or stalk into her mouth.

Anakin gently pries them out again, slobbery and crushed, and pats the plants apologetically.

He’s never going to be able to take for granted the easy access to water and greenery that is here, not as long as he lives.

They move into the second greenhouse, which is mostly flowering plants; they sell them or give them away, and some of them are used when initiates are first learning how to care for plants in general. They’re hardy and it doesn’t matter as much if an overenthusiastic or confused student accidentally kills a bed of flowers as it would a bed of food.

Padma is definitely interested in that greenhouse of her own accord. She squeals and kicks at the gentle bees and butterflies that make their homes there, and Anakin catches snatches of wonder and happiness at all the vivid colors bleeding from her mind. He smiles and kisses the top of her head, delighted just to be here, breathing and alive with his daughter.

There are many more greenhouses beyond these, providing the Order with food and medicine and some goods to trade, and he intends to carry on visiting them and checking on them until Padma loses interest, but a small door in the side wall catches his eye and he meanders over to it, smiling as the butterflies follow them, attracted to their Force signatures.

He doesn’t remember seeing doors in the side walls in any of the greenhouses before, and he spent quite a lot of time working in all of them as a young padawan.

He opens it and pokes his head inside to find another, smaller, greenhouse. It’s full of short, vividly green plants, and a soft fragrance is rising off of them. It smells vaguely familiar.

Anakin leans in the doorway, Padma cooing and babbling at the butterflies that she has figured out how to attract with the Force – oh, he’s so proud of her, such control so young, and so scared at the same time; how can he ever be trusted to raise her right? he’s so fortunate to have Padmé and Rex, he can’t even imagine doing it alone – and wrinkles his forehead in thought as he tries to remember what these plants are.

He closes his eyes as he tries to think. Weirdly enough, the scent is reminding him very strongly of when he was a kid himself, but not when he was still on Tatooine. So, something about when he first came to the Temple. What was different then that isn’t there now?

Well, lots of things.

That’s not helpful.

They weren’t at war. He hadn’t met the clones. He didn’t know many people. Obi-Wan wasn’t his Master yet. Heh, in fact, Obi-Wan was still a padawan, and wasn’t that weird to think about? Qui-Gon wasn’t dead. Sidious hadn’t gotten his fingers into his mind yet. He didn’t know what a lightsaber felt like in his hands.

Wait. Qui-Gon.

They’d moved into his rooms, Obi-Wan and him, after coming back from Naboo. There had still been traces of him all over the place, and it had taken years for the last of them to fade.

The obvious signs of his presence had gone away pretty quickly though.

Anakin takes a deep breath. Yeah, the room smells a lot like Qui-Gon.

That’s . . . weird. Weird that he can still remember that so vividly, and weird that it’s there at all. Had this been some of private greenhouse? Maybe for experiments? Obi-Wan had mentioned once or twice that he’d been extremely prone to bringing home all sorts of life forms.

“I’ve got to introduce you properly to Obi-Wan,” he tells Padma, who’s cross-eyed from looking at a green butterfly on her nose. It’s bigger than her hand. She isn’t batting at it, though, which means she must be able to feel it in the Force and know it means her no harm. “He’s your uncle. He’s amazing. You’re going to love him, and he’s going to love you.”

He looks around the room again. “And this place is probably as close as you’re ever going to get to knowing your grandfather,” he murmurs. “It smells like him. His name was Qui-Gon. He’s the reason you exist, ad’ika. He brought your mom with him when he landed on Tatooine once. She looked like an angel even though she was tired and covered in sand. I knew then that I’d follow her anywhere. And he freed me and brought me here, to everything good I’ve ever had apart from my mom. Your ba’buir Shmi. Yeah, you know her,” he coos.

The butterfly startles and flies off. Anakin’s head snaps up.

“Who’s there?” he says, hand going to his lightsaber.

That hadn’t been him or Padma that disturbed the butterfly, but he’d felt _someone_ brush at it in the Force.

“Apologies, Anakin.”

His eyes widen.

“I didn’t think anyone would be able to find the door after so long.”

He ignites his lightsaber, moving into as much of a defensive stance as he can with Padma hanging off him.

"But none of you ever come down here very often -- oh. What’s wrong?”

“Who are you?” Anakin hisses, his eyes darting around. “Show yourself.”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry. Hang on a moment, this takes some getting used to and it’s not like the younglings that come down here are interested in talking –”

“Shut up.”

That voice is so familiar and yet it’s impossible. Anakin sets his back to the wall, saber ready, and prepares to run for the exit.

A vague bluish shimmer in the air in front of him resolves into the shape of Master Qui-Gon Jinn, looking just the same as when Anakin knew him.

When he was alive.

His lightsaber wavers for a moment and then steadies. Whatever this is, he has to protect Padma.

Qui-Gon smiles at him. “It’s so good to see you again, Anakin. How tall you’ve gotten! Obi-Wan’s probably annoyed, isn’t he?”

“Who are you?” he bites out.

Qui-Gon, or whatever this specter is, blinks at him. “I’m Qui-Gon. You remember me, surely? I met you on Tatooine when you were just a tiny little boy and told you you were a Jedi? I was there when you became the first human to win the Boonta Eve Classic? Which I’m still very proud of, by the way.”

 _It’s not like someone couldn’t have found out about that_ , Anakin reminds himself.

What would only Qui-Gon himself know?

“What were your last words to Obi-Wan?” he demands. He’d heard Obi-Wan speak of them exactly once, when he was almost dying of a fever from an infected wound and off his head on drugs. As far as he knew, not even the official and unofficial reports on the mission to Naboo had included them.

A shadow of something indefinable crosses Qui-Gon’s slightly transparent face. “I asked him to train you.” He crosses his arms. “Which he has done admirably, but it was not something I should have said at that moment.”

Anakin blinks. It seems that this is the real, authentic, somehow-talking-from-beyond-the-grave Qui-Gon Jinn.

He slowly relaxes his stance and flicks his lightsaber off. For the first time, he pays attention to Padma’s reaction. She’s cooing and smiling vaguely at Qui-Gon. Well, if she senses no danger from him, and he knows the answer to that question . . .

Anakin takes five steps forward and does his best to punch a ghost in the face.

~

Obi-Wan jerks awake. He’s been napping, but something has happened and it requires his attention.

He’s been napping a lot lately, but then he hasn’t had the energy to do much else. Also, Cody has been unexpectedly cuddly and he can’t help falling asleep when he’s practically in the man’s lap and having his hair played with.

How dare Cody discover his secret weakness and then use it against him so blatantly.

“Mmmmwhat?” says Cody himself, in his ear. He’s reading something on a holopad, one arm looped around Obi-Wan’s shoulders.

“Anakin’s doing something,” Obi-Wan says, attempting to get up. Cody’s arm effortlessly holds him down.

“Nope, you’re not getting up, not after you fell over the last time. What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know.” Obi-Wan anxiously reaches out for Anakin through their bond, but winces as a flare of pain spikes through his head. Cody drops the holopad to tilt his chin up a little and look into his eyes.

He feels better since he woke up, since Mace and Luminara have helped him sort through the wreckage of his mindscape. He still can’t see Sidious’ manipulations on his own, but when they’re there with him, it sends shivers up his spine.

No part of his mind was left untouched by Sidious, and he knows intellectually now that not all of his feelings are actually his. Especially the ones that make him doubt his own worth or value or abilities.

It’s still so hard to _believe_ that, though.

And any kind of mental contact with anyone still hurts horribly, like it has for years. Anyone except Cody, that is.

Mace had told him that he had concluded that Sidious had done something to make Force bonds with other Force-sensitives very painful and difficult in an attempt to isolate him and also make Anakin more vulnerable, and he agrees with that. But apparently Sidious had never thought that in sheer desperation for some kind of contact, any kind at all, he would reach out to a non-Force-sensitive, and never would he have dreamed that someone would not only allow a Force bond but accept it and cling to it.

“I’m fine,” he says automatically, and then winces as the corners of Cody’s eyes crinkle in the way that means he’s now twice as worried as he was before. “Really, I’m fine. Anakin’s doing something weird and I forgot and tried to ask.”

Cody sighs, gently pulling Obi-Wan’s head down again to rest under his chin. He goes willingly, savoring the warmth and the heartbeat and the touch.

“Is he in danger?”

“I don’t think so. Just startled. And . . . angry? And worried.”

Cody frowns and his eyes narrow. A few seconds later, Helix pokes his head into the room.

“General Skywalker’s doing something weird,” Cody says. “Does anyone have eyes on him?”

Helix disappears for a moment and reappears with his helmet on. “They say he was last seen taking Vhekad’ika down to the greenhouses,” he reports. “He hasn’t come back. Security footage confirms it.”

“I – I don’t want to overreact, but he’s really, really fussed up about something,” Obi-Wan says, already getting tired again. He mentally curses Sidious for about the hundredth time that day for doing this to him.

“I’ll get them searching for him,” Helix says, and leaves them again.

He closes his eyes and leans into Cody. For a moment he starts to spiral into _see how useless you are now_ , but he’s startled out of it when Cody taps his nose.

He’s continually amazed at how perceptive he is. How well he’s learned to read the bond in just a few days of knowing what it is and what it can do.

“I know I’m amazing,” Cody says dryly. “I’ll wake you up when Anakin’s here.”

“Not going to sleep,” Obi-Wan mutters, head drooping. “And why’s Anakin coming here?”

He’s asleep before he hears the answer.

~

He wakes up to find Anakin breathing into his ear. It’s very, very annoying; it always has been.

He elbows him in the side. Anakin grumbles and shoves him back.

Obi-Wan flinches away and barely avoids making a noise. He knows Anakin didn’t mean to, but he hit him right where one of his ribs hurt.

Anakin jerks upright a second later, his eyes round and horrified, hands fluttering over the bandages on Obi-Wan’s torso.

“Oh shit, oh shit, Kix’s gonna kill me,” he whimpers. “Are you okay? Do you need—”

“I’m fine, Anakin,” he says, or tries to say, but it comes out as a tired croak. Force, he’s done nothing but sleep since the fight with Sidious and it’s still so hard to stay awake.

“You’ve said that when you were actively bleeding out, Obi-Wan, don’t mind me if I don’t believe you.”

Anakin, the traitor that he is, rolls off the bed and goes to call for a medic. Obi-Wan sighs grumpily, missing his warmth.

Helix comes in and looks him over, reassures Anakin that nothing’s wrong, and leaves again with a parting admonition to not try to get up without assistance.

 _Really, they’re all overreacting,_ Obi-Wan thinks. He only fell once, and that’s because he forgot his leg wouldn’t carry his weight. He could perfectly well have used the Force to steady him otherwise and gone about his normal tasks.

He winces. Most of the times he’s been awake, Cody’s been doing paperwork. Probably the paperwork he himself should be doing. It’s shocking, how much paperwork a war produces. And this is the first time he’s even seen Anakin – he’s probably been so busy filling in where he should be.

Anakin comes back in and sits down on the bed again, but more carefully. Obi-Wan is about to snap at him that he won’t shatter, thank you very much, but then he notices the bundle in Anakin’s arms and freezes.

Anakin turns it around so that he can see it, and it’s a tiny dark-haired child sitting there, looking around with big eyes. “Say hi to your ba’vodu Obi-Wan, Padma,” he singsongs.

Obi-Wan can’t speak.

“She’s already controlling the Force a little bit,” Anakin says proudly. “And she smiled for the first time the other day, at Plo. She’s three weeks old.”

“What’s her name?”

“Leia Padmakin Vhekad Amidala,” Anakin says proudly. “Mom gave her her first name, Padmé and me her second, and Rex her third.”

“They’re very unique,” Obi-Wan says helplessly, still locked in a staring contest with this tiny human that is, improbably, a blend of his former padawan and Senator Amidala.

“We call her Padma for short. Most of the men call her Vhekad’ika though.” He beams, so bright and happy it makes Obi-Wan’s heart ache. It’s not fair that only now he feels safe to be happy like this. “It’s only right she has a name from them, they’re her uncles too.”

Rex himself wanders into the room. “It’s time for her nap,” he says, taking Padma out of Anakin’s hands and tucking her against his chest like he’s done it all his life. She squirms a little but settles down happily, smacking her lips as she chews toothlessly on Rex’s shirt.

Anakin lets him. Not only lets him take his child from his arms, but smiles at him as he does so, with that sappy look that Obi-Wan’s ever only seen him direct at Padmé when he thought nobody was watching. And then he leans his head against Rex’s waist for a moment, catching his hand when he gets the baby situated so he can hold her with one hand, brushing a kiss across his knuckles.

Rex blushes a little, but he acts like it’s perfectly normal.

“Glad to see you awake and doing well, General Kenobi,” he says, smiling, and then leaves.

“What is going on,” Obi-Wan says.

“Oh, Rex agreed to marry us,” Anakin says, beaming again. “He’s aro too, did you know? It’s perfect!”

Obi-Wan sinks back a little further into his pillow that isn’t as comfortable as Cody’s shoulder and closes his eyes tiredly. “So, you are not only married to Padmé, but you and Padmé are going to be marrying Rex?”

“Yes! Well, as soon as the war’s over and everyone’s discharged from the army.” He can hear the disappointment and longing in Anakin’s voice. “It’d be . . . funky, otherwise, with rank and regulations. Though we’re working on telling the regulations to go shove it up their ass, since technically if you read the contract the Kaminoans signed, the clones don’t actually belong to the Senate, they belong to us. So we don’t have to go through the Senate to free them.”

“Who’s we?” Obi-Wan asks. He still hasn’t opened his eyes.

“Oh, me and Mace and Yoda and Plo, mostly,” says Anakin, and a chill runs down Obi-Wan’s spine.

“ _Mace?_ ”

“We talked,” Anakin says without a hint of embarrassment. “Sidious had his fingers in his mind too, made him and me fight. We apologized to each other for being assholes. He’s actually pretty cool.”

“I . . .”

“Yes, Master?”

Anakin sounds worried; he shifts closer and Obi-Wan feels the light touch of his hand on his forehead.

“I’m fine, Anakin. I just remembered a bizarre dream I had. You and Mace were talking about ziplines.”

“That wasn’t a dream,” Anakin informs him, far too cheerfully. He settles down at Obi-Wan’s side again and he gratefully inches closer into his warmth. He’s so cold, all the time. “We’re going to put in some obstacle courses and things as ways of getting around the Temple more quickly and to help us all develop our situational awareness and control over our bodies and the Force.”

Obi-Wan feels deeply suspicious, but he’s in no shape to argue. Anakin pulls his blanket up again and arranges it over his shoulders and he mumbles a thank you.

“No problem,” Anakin answers. “Oh yeah, I built you an arm. It matches mine. And I made us matching gloves, too. Do you want to see it now or later? It’s all done, I measured you for it while you were still unconscious. I hope that was all right?”

_He built me an arm. He built me an arm. Without being asked. Anakin built me –_

“I’d like to see it later, please,” he says, and closes his mouth tightly, not trusting his voice not to crack.

“Okay. It has a little compartment you can put things in, like datachips. It’s shielded, so nobody should be able to detect it. And it has pain sensors that can be turned off – I learned those could be useful the hard way – and it has a magnetic clamp you can use to keep your lightsaber in your hand without having to actively hold it. I just tried that out on my arm, and I love it already.”

Anakin shifts a little, and Obi-Wan gets the feeling that he’s looking at him.

“The power cells should only have to be charged once a year or so, probably longer once the war ends. I sort of built it for combat. I mean, it’s not very useful to not expect it to take some knocks, what with how we live . . . I can build another one once it’s over that’s less optimized for fighting. If you don’t like it. I hope it’s comfortable, I tried my best. Mine used to ache a lot before I figured out a better way to cushion it. Oh! And I built it out of non-magnetic metal so that the thing with the magnetized doors and ceilings and stuff shouldn’t happen as often. Obi-Wan? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Anakin,” he says, and tries to choke back his tears. “I would have been fine, you didn’t have to waste your time with it.”

“Waste?” Anakin turns on his side, and slides a careful arm under Obi-Wan’s head, eerily mirroring the way Cody holds him when he is feeling worried. “It wasn’t a waste of time, Master. How could it be? It was for you.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “You’ve got – Padmé. Your daughter. Rex. Don’t need – distraction.”

Anakin’s arm tightens around his shoulders, and he presses his forehead to Obi-Wan’s, like the clones do to their brothers. “You’re my brother. You’re just as much part of my family as they are. I wanted to build it for you. It wasn’t a distraction or a burden or something I didn’t want to do.”

“I feel like a burden. All the time. Always. Since I was an initiate.”

“You’re not a burden to me,” Anakin says fiercely, and Obi-Wan feels him wrap his Force presence around him, swirling, comforting darkness and light intertwined. It feels like the vastness of space and the strength of storms, but centered around him, guarding him.

“What were you so upset about earlier,” he says a while later, after he’s calmed down.

“What? Oh, that,” Anakin mutters darkly. “I was showing Padma around the greenhouses, and I found a surprise. It wasn’t especially pleasant.”

“What was it?”

Anakin sighs. “I want to tell you, but Kix and Cody and Yoda threatened me,” he says unhappily. “They’re going to tell you, I promise, and it’s not bad and we’re not in danger. It’s just . . . complicated.”

“Why don’t they want you to tell me?”

Anakin huffs into his ear. Again. Obi-Wan bats him away. “They want your mindscape to get better before dumping more weird Force stuff into it.”

Obi-Wan considers this. Most of him wants to know what upset Anakin so, but his mind does feel raw and frayed. “All right,” he sighs. “What did you name your daughter again?”

Anakin takes the change in subject more gracefully than usual. “Padamkin Vhekad,” he answers, his infatuation with his child clear in his voice.

Obi-Wan isn’t quite fluent in Mando’a, but he knows enough to translate the name Rex gave her. He grins. It seems that Anakin doesn’t know. “Where did you come up with _Padmakin_?” he questions instead.

“Eh, we hadn’t really thought we’d live long enough to name her, so we were sort of panicking, and then we decided to just blend our first names. There were other options we could have picked, but they were more unbalanced. Padmakin is almost an equal blend of both our names. Our first names. If we’d blended our surnames that’d have just sounded silly.”

“Maybe.” Obi-Wan thinks that Padmakin is a pretty silly name as it is, but he can’t deny that shortening it to Padma makes it more tolerable. He says as much, smiling tiredly at the offended pout Anakin gets.

“Master, we were both high on painkillers, and really tired. I think we did marvelously.”

“Yes, you did,” he agrees. “Though still. Well, at least it isn’t as bad of a name as Korkie. There aren’t even any good nicknames you can get from that one.”

“Yeah,” Anakin agrees after a thoughtful pause. “Who do you know with that name?”

“Satine’s nephew,” Obi-Wan answers, drifting back into sleep. “He’s Ahsoka’s age. Though, he doesn’t look like Bo-Katan at all. Genes are strange. Korkie Kryze, poor boy.”

“I didn’t know she had a brother?”

“She doesn’t.”

“But Bo-Katan is like ten years younger than her,” he hears Anakin muttering, but it’s far away and he’s so tired. “How’d that work? She’d have had to have him when she was a young teenager.”

“Didn’t know you knew her,” he manages to say.

“I don’t, but Padmé knows the Kryze family tree. Why does he have Kryze as a surname? It should be his father’s name, not his mother’s.”

He’s too tired to answer, and falls asleep to the sound of Anakin very slowly spelling Korkie’s name, for some reason.

“Oh, kriff. Obi-Wan? Oh, you’re asleep. Oh, shit, you’re going to freak when you hear this,” Anakin says about half an hour later, after grabbing a holopad and finding a picture of young Korkie Kryze. He looks down at his sleeping Master, a reluctant grin twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Hey, at least after this, you’ll have no room to tease me about Padma’s name. Good grief, she really did just mix your surnames and you didn’t even notice? For twenty years?”


End file.
